Tolerating Uncertainty

Uncertainty in motion

I have a Post-It note on my bathroom mirror that says, “You have to give up the life you have to get to the life that’s waiting for you.” I keep it there to remind me that uncertainty is not only a part of life, but a spice of life, much like flatulence-inducing Turmeric. I hear so many people describe white-knuckling change in their lives—losing a job, dating a new person, going on vacation somewhere different—because they are unable to tolerate the uncertainty that goes hand-in-hand with it.

The problem with most people (besides the fact that they never remember to turn off their bloody cell phones during movies, meetings, or dates) is that they want the promise of The New Life before they let go of their current incarnation, no matter how badly they want things to change. It’s like waiting to divorce your current husband until after you marry your new guy. “Just in case the new hubby doesn’t work out!” you might say. That’s not the way it works (unless you live in Utah where they call this polygamy).

Tolerating uncertainty is based on faith. Not necessarily Faith, capital F, but just regular, garden-variety faith. The ability to trust without a guarantee. Like the faith we have in electricity—I trust that my lights will turn on the next time I flip the switch (which, by the way, doesn’t always happen in this 1930s building I live in). Like the faith we have that we’ll awaken after falling asleep. Like the faith we have that Trader Joe’s will have All Sortsa Licorice for sale when we’re jonesin’ for it bad.

When we don’t have faith (no matter how much we listen to George Michael insist that we gotta have it), what we have is fear. In the case of uncertainty, this shows up as a fear of impermanence. I used to think that once I achieved a desired state—whether it was my weight, frequency and excitement of sex in a relationship, level of ease in a job, or diminished volume of the voices in my head—I would stay there forever, and if I didn’t, well then something was clearly wrong with me. Ha! What was wrong with me was believing in the absolute permanence of things, including my emotional state. What am I, a robot?

According to Pema Chödrön, author of Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears, suffering is nothing but resistance. As soon as we feel pain, discomfort, uncertainty, we run from it and seek short-term relief. We always feel restless and uncomfortable because we’re always trying to “get ground under our feet”, and that never works because everything is impermanent. Cyclical, perhaps, but impermanent.

But guess what? We won’t die from uncomfortable feelings. I’ve never heard of an autopsy revealing that someone dropped dead of uncertainty. By learning to sit with our feelings of discomfort or even pain, the uncertainty becomes familiar, and gradually it loses its menace.